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Digital collections
Letter from Alfredo Guevara, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Culture of Cuba and founder of ICAIC, to Luis Gasca, Secretary General of the Festival
July 2023
On 26 August 1977 the Vice-Ministry of Culture and founder of the ICAIC, Alfredo Guevara, wrote from Havana to Luis Gasca, General Secretary of the Festival, regarding the composition of the Cuban delegation to attend the Festival. Notably accompanying the Cuban members were two foreign names, irremediably linked to the political upheavals of the century. The first was Walter Achugar, co-founder of the short-lived Cinemateca del Tercer Mundo in Montevideo, annihilated by the self-same dictatorship that drove him into exile: first of all in Argentina, and later in Venezuela, until landing in Spain, where he became the representative of Cuban cinema in western Europe. The second was the Basque filmmaker Antxon Eceiza who, fleeing the Franco dictatorship, went into exile in Mexico from 1973. According to Guevara, Eceiza was to join the Cuban delegation at the last minute with his film Mina, viento de libertad. The archive conserves the letter in which, only days earlier, Eceiza had personally informed Gasca of the difficulties he was experiencing with his film – a portrait of the 19th century guerrilla fighter from Navarre, Francisco Javier Mina, with explicit nods to contemporary militants from Che to Txiki – when endeavouring to register his film as Mexican in international festivals:
I don’t think, in view of the turn events are taking here, that the Mexicans will decide to include me in their Delegation, particularly when I am not Mexican; they already sent me to Moscow and the film, which is frankly not what they would choose to send to Spain at this time (sic), will go there as Cuban.
In the climate of unrest and transformation characterising the Festival in 1977, the competition’s first strictly post-Franco edition, Achugar and Eceiza would play a decisive role in the two meetings taking place in San Sebastian. The Uruguayan was one of the promotors of the declaration, signed at the V Meeting of Latin American Filmmakers, denouncing the disappearance, under the dictatorships of the Southern Cone, of intellectuals and filmmakers such as Raymundo Gleyzer. For his part, Eceiza attended the meeting, held in the Sociedad Fotográfica de Gipuzkoa, which culminated in foundation of the Euskal Zine Egille Elkartea [Association of Basque Filmmakers].
Full description sheet
Document
Letter from Alfredo Guevara, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Culture of Cuba and founder of ICAIC, to Luis Gasca, Secretary General of the Festival
Identity statement area
ID: 38938
Catalogue number: AO1977-1978.0241
Location: M02.B03.C01
Classification scheme: 4.4.5. Public administrations and political parties
Title: Letter from Alfredo Guevara, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Culture of Cuba and founder of ICAIC, to Luis Gasca, Secretary General of the Festival
Date of creation: 1977-08-26
Level of description: Simple documentary unit
Extent and medium of the unit of description: 2 documents
Context area
Producer: Alfredo Guevara
Content and structure area
Places: La Habana
Conditions of access and use area
Conditions governing access: Conditions governing access
Conditions governing reproduction: Conditions governing reproduction
Área de control
Conservación: Anna Ferrer, Andrea Sánchez
Catalogación: Edurne Arocena (Ereiten)
Letter from Alfredo Guevara, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Culture of Cuba and founder of ICAIC, to Luis Gasca, Secretary General of the Festival (1977) San Sebastian Festival Archive [+]
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